Fewer Connecticut veterans homeless this year, but overall homelessness up

Published 1:45 pm, Friday, May 16, 2014

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Fewer Connecticut veterans homeless this year, but overall homelessness up

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HARTFORD >> Homelessness among Connecticut veterans is down 17 percent, but the state’s overall homeless population has not decreased. In fact, the number of homeless families has increased in the last year, up 4.5 percent, according to the results of the 2014 Connecticut Point in Time count.

The 2014 count marks Connecticut’s eighth annual survey at a statewide level by the Connecticut Coalition to End Homelessness. CCEH conducted the survey in late January, as required the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. HUD requires communities to report the number of people who are homeless in their borders on one night during the last week of January, so that a national data pool on homelessness can be maintained.

As of the 2014 count, 3,571 people were in emergency shelters and similar facilities — nearly level with the count of sheltered homeless in 2013. Some 221 total veterans were counted — a 17 percent decrease in the sheltered veteran population compared to 2013, and a 38 percent decrease since 2009.

Under federal guidelines, only those adults and children who were homeless in emergency shelters, transitional housing programs and domestic violence shelters were counted. The “unsheltered count,” which CCEH conducts in Connecticut every other year, includes a street count of adults and children living in places unfit for human habitation, such as abandoned buildings and under bridges.

— One in five homeless people is a child: Seven hundred and eighty children under the age of 18 were homeless – representing 22 percent of all persons counted.

— Domestic violence is a strong, contributing factor in homelessness: Fourteen percent of the total sheltered adults reported domestic violence as a contributing factor to their homelessness.

“There is great progress in Connecticut toward ending veteran homelessness,” said CCEH Executive Director Lisa Tepper Bates, “but there is more to be done to help families and singles in the general homeless population.”

Bates said a strategy known as Rapid Re-Housing, which combines housing location services with targeted financial assistance to help people exit shelter and return to permanent housing, is showing promising results across the nation in helping to reduce homelessness. “Connecticut is doing some good work in Rapid Re-Housing — we need to expand the volume of that work,” and, at the same time, continue to identify those who are disabled and homeless for long periods of time, and those who require housing subsidy and case management supports to achieve stability.